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1) Prep for the ride home with mom or dad – what did you do today? What did you learn?

2) What did you find the most interesting or fun today?

3) We have seen that your reality is a combination of data received by your senses and your brain’s interpretation of that data. So….what is real? How do you know what is real? If you think you see a ghost, is that real? If you see talking cats, I mean it’s really there talking to you and a nice man in a white coat tells you that you are hallucinating, how do know which is the hallucination – the cat or the man?

The totally wrong atom image everyone has seen so they think it is true.

This week we study all about electrons. They matter because they are the parts that make reactions happens and are behind the beauty of the periodic table, aka next week’s adventure.

<— The lie we teach because it’s easier to understand. (This is a bad Bohr model with the wrong number of electrons in each orbit. Furthermore, this atom says it’s actually an ion because it is missing an electron. Is it sure? It’s positive.Get it?! Ha ha ha.)

Accurate Bohr Model and Quantum Configuration.

Better, shows the right number of electrons and the quantum configuration, but there’s more. –>

Below, and even more true image. These are the different probability clouds where electrons are most likely to buzzing around. These clouds layer on top of each other to make a very complex, lovely atom.

The actual shapes of the clouds where electrons are most likely to be found.

Finally, the most true is below. This is an actual image of an antimony atom on the surface of a crystal of silicon, taken with a Scanning Tunneling Microscope, or STM.

Basically, the tip of the microscope gets so close to the material, electrons from the material tunnel up the vacuum to the tip. The amount of electric charge is recorded. The tip slides a step over and another electron tunnels up, and the amount of charge is recorded. Different distances have different charges. A computer takes the differences, and creates an image from them,much like a ship makes a sea floor image from sonar.A STM tip probing the surface of silicon looking for antimony.

So what is the whole smash? The Standard Model.

All the pieces that make up the universe! Except…well…

Except…look, do you see a particle for gravity? What about dark matter and dark energy? (aka 96% of the universe) Yeah, there’s always more to the story….

Welcome! So glad to have you and newly identified mammalian carnivore with us! The olinguito pictured above has been in museums for decades, but misidentified as its older cousin, the Olingo. Both are shy, arboreal creatures of the South American cloud forest, and darn cute.

That and so much more coolness of science is coming your way this week in our prep week unit on science safety and methods, with a nod to the upcoming unit on the properties of matter. We will come to understand the beauty of the scientific method and how you have been lied to about what it is up to this point, and practice it by trying to make sense of strange phenomena. We will also tour the possible dangers in a lab and how to avoid them.

Everything will be served with a side order of, “whoa…that’s weird.” Ask your kids about neutrinos….